Reforge Membership · 2022–2023
Moving Reforge from per-seat to flat team pricing
Reforge offered on-demand learning and live courses for product and growth practitioners and their teams. I led design as memberships moved to flat team tiers and separate course passes, connecting buyer research to renewal, purchase and account management.
- My work
- Design lead and player-coach. Buyer research, journey design, team reviews and QA.
- Team
- Product design, PM and engineering, with sales, finance and the chief of staff.
- Product status
- Pricing launched in 2023
Separate learning access from live-course commitments
Reforge’s membership combined an on-demand learning library with scheduled live courses, called cohorts. The bundle did not fit members who valued the library but could not commit to the live schedule. Team buyers also had to decide whether each paid seat would get enough use.
- Previous model
- A bundled membership, with team pricing calculated per seat.
- New model
- A flat team tier with a defined seat allowance. Cohort passes purchased separately for people ready to take a live course.
Two balances, two kinds of access
The billing design separates membership seats from cohort passes, with a balance and management action for each. Interface prices throughout this case are historical design examples.
Team membership: seat capacity, renewal date and plan management.
Live cohorts: buy passes and assign them separately from team seats.
I connected the research to the membership journeys, coordinated the migration with the PM, reviewed designers’ work and designed some screens and flows myself. The work covered renewing, buying, managing access and recovering an account after a failed payment.
Understand what buyers valued, then test the offer
I led buyer interviews with our chief of staff and head of sales, with approximately ten team buyers in the initial synthesis. Separately, sales tested concrete flat-tier offers with more than thirty plan managers.
Members valued different learning formats
Buyer interviews
Some buyers valued the library itself. Others relied on live cohorts for structure and accountability. Format and available time mattered before price.
Design decision
Separate membership from live courses
Let buyers choose ongoing access and scheduled participation independently.
TradeoffLess upfront commitment could also mean less motivation to start.
Broader access needed clearer seat allowances
Sales offer feedback
Broader access appealed to many teams, but smaller companies could fall between tiers and pay for capacity they did not need.
Design decision
Make the capacity change explicit
Compare the current allowance, next tier and sales-assisted option together.
TradeoffOne additional seat could still trigger a much larger purchase.
Course participation was hard to forecast
Plan-manager feedback
Buyers struggled to predict future enrollment. Budgets also varied between centrally funded teams and individual learning allowances.
Design decision
Allow passes to be bought later
Keep purchasing, available balances and assignment accessible from the account.
TradeoffVolume discounts added calculation to an already uncertain decision.
These findings were qualitative and varied by team segment. The initial interview study did not test individual members’ willingness to pay; other work in the broader program explored individual pricing.
Help existing members choose their next plan
We prioritized members approaching renewal. Launching new-customer acquisition at the same time would have added signup, onboarding and marketing work. I coordinated the high-level journeys and design reviews across those phases with the PM.
The team combined flat tiers and separate course purchases into the renewal release. That avoided explaining two successive pricing changes or multiplying the offer into several cohort bundles for every tier. Members could select their upcoming plan before it took effect at renewal.
Make the current plan and the next allowance comparable
The plan-selection design identifies the current tier, the next seat allowance and the sales-assisted option. Prorated upgrades were a separate requirement, with calculations to resolve with Finance.
Current-plan detail: Starter covers ten seats.
Upgrade detail: crossing the seat allowance means moving to the next tier.
Renewal depended on the account’s starting state
The existing revenue-journey audit mapped reminders, account changes and payment outcomes. This summary follows the automatic-billing renewal path we had to account for in the migration.
- 30 days before
Check the account
Auto-renew status and payment validity determine which reminder is sent.
- Before renewal
Resolve any changes
Send a seven-day reminder. Support cancellation, reactivation, seat changes or payment updates as needed.
- Billing period ends
Process the renewal
Successful payment leads to receipts and an active account. Other paths lead to expiry or payment recovery.
Manage team seats and course passes separately
A team seat gave a colleague membership access. A cohort pass let them join a live course. Plan managers needed to understand both balances, buy more passes and assign them to the people ready to enroll.
Connect capacity to the people using it
Seat and pass balances sit above the member list. Pass ownership and enrollment status stay separate, so a manager can see who has access and who has joined a course.
From the manager’s assignment to the member’s enrollment
The manager assigns access in a member panel. The learner then finds an open cohort, checks the course details and confirms enrollment. These design states show both sides of that journey.
1 / 4 Assign a pass
Manager: assign a pass in the member panel, with the consequence explained beside the control.
The user stories also covered unassignment, expiry and active-pass limits. Several edge cases were deferred; the designs do not establish that every behavior shipped.
Keep the purchase and its total understandable
New members moved from plan selection through optional cohort passes, payment and review. The order recap carried their choices through the flow, with tax added to the final total.
From add-ons to a confirmed membership
After choosing a plan, the buyer selects any additional passes, enters payment details and reviews the full amount before committing.
1 / 4 Choose additional passes
After plan selection, additional passes are optional. Quantity pricing sits beside the current order.
Keep the total beside the decisions that change it
The broader checkout specification also covered membership purchases and upgrades. A total could include an annual plan, quantity-priced passes, a coupon, proration and tax.
Separate line items explained why the amount due differed from the headline membership price. The recap also needed to state renewal terms, pass expiry and the active-membership requirement.
An itemized order recap
Recap detail: separate line items explain why the amount due differs from the membership price.
More flexible access, with new purchasing friction
By the March 2023 readout, customers were moving onto new plans and purchasing, assigning and using cohort passes. Early renewal signals were encouraging, but targets remained unmet. Delayed team payments also made it difficult to distinguish a late renewal from churn.
Flexibility was valued
The retrospective recorded positive responses to buying courses separately. The team believed this helped retain some members, but the available evidence does not establish a lasting retention lift.
Course forecasting stayed difficult
Buyers struggled to predict participation and understand volume discounts. Simpler pass pricing and alternative purchasing models were proposed as follow-up work.
Some teams fell between tiers
Teams with roughly eleven to fifteen people faced a large step up. The retrospective records an unlisted intermediate tier used for some customers.
The project changed the membership model and the account journeys around it. It also showed that separating purchases does not remove the work of deciding what to buy. Forecasting, tier boundaries and the checkout calculation remained important design problems.
Read Reforge’s May 2023 pricing and teams announcement